Frown/smile detection is used by some consumer cameras to automatically identify good images. (The technology can be used to trigger image capture when a favorable facial expression is sensed, or to select from among a series of images, to pick a favorable image therefrom. It is sometimes termed a “smile shutter.”) See, e.g., US patent publications US20070201725, US20080309796, US20090002512, and US20100110265.
Related technology has also been proposed for games, in which a user's facial expression is sensed, and mimicked on an avatar that corresponds to the user in a game. See, e.g., Microsoft's US2011007142. Neven et al has done related work, shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,580,811 and 6,714,661.
Facial expressions can also be used in conjunction with commercial methods, to sense which ads or products are pleasing (or not) to viewers. See, e.g., US20090118593, US2009112616 and US20040001616.
Motorola has proposed a phone that senses and communicates the user's emotional state, as indicated by facial expressions. See U.S. Pat. No. 7,874,983.
Verizon has suggested tailoring behavior of a user interface based on a user's sensed emotional state. For example, if the user's voice sounds stressed, a phone UI may address the user more slowly. See US20100037187. Related “affective computing” technology is detailed in Microsoft's U.S. Pat. No. 6,212,502, in which the user's emotional state is sensed, and a “help system” user interface responds accordingly. The Microsoft system relies on a Bayesian network to recognize the user's emotion. Additional mood-detecting technology is detailed in Microsoft's US20090002178.
A recent survey of affective computing techniques is provided in Robinson, The Emotional Computer, Ninth Intl Conference on Pervasive Computing, June, 2011.
Separately, smartphones are used to sense machine readable data from physical media. For example, consumers increasingly use smartphones to read QR codes and encoded digital watermarks from posters, magazines and newspapers, in order to link to related content. Such technology is detailed, e.g., in the assignee's U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,947,571, 6,590,996, 20110161076 and 20100150434, and in application Ser. Nos. 13/079,327, filed Apr. 4, 2011, and 13/011,618, filed Jan. 21, 2011.
In accordance with one aspect of the present technology, the LED “torch” (illuminator) of a smartphone is activated when a user seems to be having difficulty using the smartphone to sense machine-readable data. With additional illumination on the object being imaged, the smartphone processor may be better able to decode the encoded information from the captured imagery.
The foregoing and additional features and advantages of the present technology will be more readily apparent from the following description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.